The Bengali language
and how it is written

Where Bengali ranks

Bengali is the 7th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Bengali

The design of Bengali–Assamese script

An abugida of the Brahmi family, like Devanagari: inherent vowel, vowel signs, conjuncts and a headline that runs along the top of most letters^[8,4]. Its letters are more angular-hooked and many break the headline.

Abugida (syllabic). Each consonant carries a vowel, changed by marks attached to it.

Kind

Abugida (syllabic)

Direction

Left to right

Took shape

Out of the eastern Gaudi script, recognisable by about the 11th century CE

Line of descent

Brahmi → Gupta → Siddham → Gaudi → Bengali

Traditional surface

Palm leaves

Own digits

০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯

Also writes

No other language among the 38 is written mainly in Bengali–Assamese script.

• A headline with gaps

  Like Devanagari, Bengali hangs letters from a headline, but several letters such as এ and ঐ leave it out, giving words a broken, rhythmic top edge^[4].

• Printed in 1778

  The first book printed with Bengali movable type was Nathaniel Halhed's 'A Grammar of the Bengal Language' (Hooghly, 1778). Charles Wilkins designed the type and Panchanan Karmakar cut it^[5].

• Dense with conjuncts

  Bengali writing uses many stacked consonant clusters, so fonts carry hundreds of conjunct shapes; Unicode encodes only the letters and lets the font build them^[8].

• Short o by default

  Where Hindi's inherent vowel is 'a', Bengali's is closer to 'ô', so the same letter ক reads ko rather than ka, a reminder that one script can carry different sounds^[4].

• A day for every language

  Bengali is the only language whose struggle gave the world a UN-observed day for all languages: 21 February^[6].

Explore the letters

Numbers in Bengali–Assamese script

Bengali's relatives among the 38

Bengali belongs to the Indo-European family (Indo-Aryan). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• हिन्दीHindiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 611M
• اُردُوUrduSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 246M
• मराठीMarathiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 99M
• پنجابیWestern PunjabiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 90M
• ગુજરાતીGujaratiSame branch: Indo-Aryan · 62M
• EnglishEnglishGermanic · 1.5B
• españolSpanishRomance · 561M
• françaisFrenchRomance · 334M
• portuguêsPortugueseRomance · 269M
• русскийRussianBalto-Slavic · 210M
• DeutschGermanGermanic · 133M
• فارسیPersian (Iranian)Iranian · 82M
• italianoItalianRomance · 66M
• भोजपुरीBhojpuriIndo-Aryan (Bihari) · 53M

Bengali across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Bengali.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Bengali language
4. Omniglot — Bengali alphabet
5. History of Information — Halhed publishes the first letterpress-printed book in Bengali (1778)
6. UNESCO — International Mother Language Day
7. Press Information Bureau, Government of India — Classical language status for Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali (3 Oct 2024)
8. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 12: South and Central Asia-I (Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada)
9. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Bengali

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.